Category: Selling Tips

How Automation Can Supercharge Marketing For Your Online Business

  • Jason@DPD
  • June 25, 2019
  • No Comments

Online businesses have so many more opportunities to market than pre-internet brick and mortar stores. But with those opportunities come some challenges. You’re expected to show up in so many different places and have a presence in so many channels. Email marketing, new social media platforms all the time, mobile marketing, etc. 

How do you keep it all going at once without dropping the ball? Where do you find the time?

According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound report for 2019, The top marketing challenge for companies was generating leads and traffic, followed by proving the ROI of their marketing methods and obtaining the budget to pull it all off. Marketing automation tools can help you with all three. 

Automating your online marketing can help you generate more leads and grow your traffic, analyze exactly the ROI you’re getting on your marketing, and reduce your costs making it easier to hit the budget. 

What can automation do for you?

Automation allows you to leverage online tools and technology to save time and effort. You can automate communication, lead nurturing, content scheduling, research and analytics, and social media processes. All of this lets you get more done in less time, saving money while you reach more clients. Here are some examples of how you can use online marketing automation to reach more clients in less time:

Communications

When leads reach out to you online, how long does it take them to get a response? If the answer is longer than a few minutes, it could be costing you new customers. We live in the age of impatience and a lead who is actively looking for your products and services will quickly move on to the next provider while awaiting your reply. 

You can automate emails to respond to inquiries, giving you more time to provide an answer to the question being asked. You can do similar things with social media messenger apps, like Facebook Messenger. Chatbot technology can even carry on a simple customer service or marketing conversation for you, providing leads and current customers with simple information and answers instantly.  

Lead nurturing

You can automate the nurturing process by setting an automated sequence of messages through email, messenger, or even text messages. This allows you to follow up and stay top-of-mind with your leads automatically. 

Content scheduling

If you use a lot of content to market your business on social media, it can take hours to schedule posts to different platforms at the best times of day for each. This process can be automated, allowing you to paste the content into a tool which schedules on multiple platforms at specified times throughout the day. Finally, you can handle all your social media posting at once and let it trickle out at the perfect time.  

Aiming at the Right Target

Before you think about online marketing automation tools, you have to consider what you want to achieve and the best way to go about it. A few questions up front will save you a lot of trial and error later on. 

What tasks should you automate?

You’ve got a lot on your plate. Marketing involves a lot of different steps and not all of them are prime targets for automation. You have to determine which ones take up a lot of your team’s time, without the need for human decision making and judgement. 

Repetitive tasks that your team perform in the same way, over and over again, will save the most time and give the best results if automated. The repetitive and sometimes boring nature of those tasks (let’s be honest) also creates a higher risk of mistakes. That can be prevented by automation.

What tools should you use?

Some of the top online marketing automation tools are discussed below. For now, think about the tasks you’ve just decided to focus on. Chances are there are several tools on the market to do each of them. You’re looking for the ones that fit your budget and the unique needs of your company for that task. 

Who’s in charge of those tools?

Automation tools save tons of time and effort and streamline your day to day marketing, but they do still take time to set up and master. Decide who in your organization will be using these tools and what the learning curve looks like. The makers of these automation tools want you to succeed and continue using them. Many offer free training, support, and even certification. 

Re-evaluate 

Automation tools can help you track ROI, but how do you track the ROI of the tools themselves? Before you start using a new tool, take a look at the results you’re getting and the time and energy you’re putting into that specific task. Once you’re up and running with a new automation tool, compare your new results to see if the tool is helping you improve your outcome. 

Top Marketing Automation Tools

Hubspot

Hubspot offers a range of automation tools in its marketing suite, depending on the level you purchase. You can manage and segment your email list, build automated email campaigns, and connect everything to the built in CRM. 

Pardot 

For a product with a bit more of a sale process, Pardot can be a great option. It automates and streamlines the sales process, allowing you to track, nurture, and score leads. It also makes it easy to track ROI for your campaigns. All of this connects with your SalesForce CRM, since Pardot is made by SalesForce. 

Hootesuite

For social media marketing, Hootesuite offers pretty much everything you need. You can schedule all your social media posts in one place at one time. 

Hootesuite will alert you when your company or product is mentioned on social, so you can make the most of free publicity or put out any fires before they spread. You can also keep a close eye on the analytics of all your social media content. 

A few new automation tools likely hit the market while you were reading this article. Take a look at what’s out there and see how automation can help you make the most of your day to day marketing efforts.

Keys to Starting a Digital Product Store in 2019

  • Jason@DPD
  • June 18, 2019
  • No Comments

Whether you want to create a freedom lifestyle or just build a business that can scale, selling a digital product is one of the best options out there. Unlike a direct service, you’re not limited by the amount of time you have to provide it. And unlike a physical product, there’s no inventory, no shipping, and no worries about where your customers are located.

Once a digital product has been created, it can be bought and downloaded by as many customers as you can find. This means you can scale the business to any size while working from anywhere. 

So, what does it take to start a digital product store in 2019? The tools are definitely available. Here’s what you need to get started: 

A Great Product

Of course, you need something to sell. If you’re considering starting a digital product store, you may already have a product in mind or may even have it ready to go. If not, you’ll need to decide on a product and put it together or partner with a creator to sell their product. 

A digital product could be anything from a 99 cent song to a downloadable online course worth thousands of dollars. Books, music, software and apps, art, and digital courses are all examples of great digital products. You just need a product that provides value to your customers in some way. 

Picking the Right Name

Naming your store can be a fun process. Just make sure your creative juices don’t take you too far. You need a name that’s easy to remember and easy to spell. Complicated names and creative spellings can make it hard for customers to find your store. 

When you choose your name, make sure not to limit yourself too much. You may be selling a single digital product today but what if you want to expand and diversify down the road? Choose a name that works for more than one product and you can continue the name and reputation you’ve built with new products. 

Along with non-traditional spelling, avoid hyphens and other punctuation that your customers won’t expect if they’re spelling out your name after hearing it spoken (you want that word of mouth to work, right?).

Claim Your Domain

Your domain name is the address where your store will be found online. A short, memorable .com or .io domain name can make your digital product store look more established and professional. 

Name and domain go hand-in-hand. Take a look at available domain names while you’re deciding on your store name. If you’re able to get the .com domain name that matches your store name, you can make it much easier for customers to remember your URL and find your store. There’s nothing more frustrating than choosing a name you like and finding out the matching domain name is owned by someone who’s not even using it.

When looking for a domain name, consider your registrar options. The cost of your domain name may vary between registrars but hosting and security may be bundled together to provide a better overall price for your needs.  

Set Up Hosting

If your domain is the address where your store is found, hosting is the landlord. Your hosting company provides servers for your site. Choose a reputable hosting company to help ensure that the servers don’t go down (causing your site to be inaccessible) and that you get reliable customer service when needed.

Again, one factor in choosing your hosting company may be bundle services. Some offer free domain registration or easy set-up with the platform you’re using (like WordPress).  

Think Security

One thing many people forget about is an SSL security certificate. SSL certificates are a way to show the internet that your site is secure and trusted. It attaches a file to your site so browsers know you’re legitimate.  

Having an SSL certificate in place can establish trust with your customers, since a website without one is label “Not Secure” in the web browser. Even if the site is safe, this is unnerving for shoppers. In fact, you won’t be able to process online payments through a sight without SSL – at least not without a lot of extra steps and a special setup.

The SSL certificate is another thing you may be able to get bundled from your hosting provider. Keep that in mind when you shop for hosting and domain names.  

Secure, Convenient Payment Processing and More

Once you have all the basics set up on your digital product store, you’re almost ready to open your doors. But, of course, you don’t want a store if no one can pay you. Payment processing has to be set up to allow online card and bank payments from customers. 

There are several payment processors you can choose from and a lot of moving parts. Knowing which one to go with and how to set up payments on your store can be daunting. If you want to simplify the process and get started selling your digital product fast, look no further than www.getDPD.com.

DPD offers more than just payment processing. You can upload your digital product easily and DPD will provide seamless digital delivery when your customers purchase your product. No more worries about delivery and fulfilment issues. 

Once your product is uploaded to DPD, you simply paste the “buy” button to your site allowing DPD to handle the payment and order processing for you. You bring in the customers and DPD does the rest. All for a flat monthly fee with no transaction fee per download, so you can scale as high and as quickly as you want. 

You can also use Zapier to connect DPD to many 3rd party apps like Mailchimp and Google, Analytics, making it easier to track your business and grow your sales. 

Are you ready to go from ambition to making your first sale in no time? DPD makes it possible. Click to learn more and get started now! 

How Proper Social Proof Can Double Your Digital Product Sales

  • Jason@DPD
  • June 11, 2019
  • No Comments

Social proof has been a “thing” for years, but it’s still one of the hottest trends in marketing today. Why? Because it works, and it’s just what you need to send your digital product sales into the stratosphere. Simply put, people like what other people like and they buy what other people are buying. It’s the same dynamic that is making influencer marketing is so hot right now. 

But how can you leverage social proof to make a difference in your bottom line and your digital product sales?

With the growth of social media and the corresponding growth of technology, social proof is relevant to marketing on a scale that Robert Cialdini likely never imagined when he first coined the term in his 1984 book, Influence.And while influencer marketing is important, social proof goes far beyond influencers, with testimonials, good reviews, expert opinions and blurbs, personal recommendations, and more, playing a role. Let’s dive deeper into how you can capitalize on several forms of social proof to grow your digital product sales.

The Power of a Good Review

People want to be where the action is and they tend to buy what other people like. The numbers show this is resoundingly true as at least 85% of us read reviews online before spending money at a business! 

In fact, according to BrightLocal, 91% of us trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. So while you definitely want to leverage influencers and personal recommendations as much as possible, you want to focus heavily on getting reviews, especially those in the four-star and five-star range. Reviews can make a difference in 66% of all purchase decisions – that’s huge.

Why Bad Reviews Matter for Digital Product Sales 

People may not always speak up about good experiences, but they definitely speak up about bad ones. Having a bad customer experience go viral can be very damaging to your future sales as well as your business’ brand. When your overall rating loses a single star or goes from a four-star rating to three, you can lose 5-9% in sales.

These numbers are significant, however realistically, not everyone will decide not to purchase based on a single bad review, and in fact, having some negative reviews can actually help your digital product sales. After all, people prefer to buy from brands that have a four-star rating, and actually trust these products more than those with five-star ratings. Why? Because no one has a perfect reputation, and people are naturally suspicious of products that have all five-star reviews. 

So how can you leverage a bad review into higher digital product sales?

That’s where this aspect of social proof gets really interesting. People tend to trust brands that acknowledge the bad reviews and respond to them over those that sweep the problem under the rug. So turning bad reviews into an opportunity to improve client communication and solve new problems, you can actually turn a bad review into higher digital product sales.


And there’s something else to consider, too. Some consumers search specifically for negative reviews and these folks can actually end up being some of the highest converting, by as much as 85%. So when you handle your reputation management the right way, not only do you appear trustworthy and authentic, you demonstrate that you care about your clients and their needs. Plus, it may yield an opportunity for an updated review or a new positive one. And there’s no better social proof than that!

The dangers of using negative social proof

There should be no doubt in your mind by this point that social proof is a powerful option to grow your digital product sales. However, keep a close eye on your messaging. You want to focus on positive aspects rather than negative. For an example this, consider when the Arizona Petrified Forest posted three different signs to keep people from stealing petrified wood. 

This one actually reversed the effect and led to more vandalism: “Your heritage is being vandalized every day by theft losses of petrified wood of 14 tons a year.”

Can you guess why? 

It sends the message that everyone else is doing it. And with that, people tend to figure: “why not me, too?”

So, while you want to use social proof to increase your digital product sales, you want to be sure you’re doing it the right way.

How to integrate social proof into your product page

At this point, it’s really a no-brainer that you want to start leveraging social proof to increase your digital product sales. But what types of social proof do you want to add to your product page?

Testimonials & Reviews

Testimonials from clients you’ve worked with can be indispensable, as can those great reviews. Choose a few that are really great, and select short, meaningful blurbs from each that will really speak to your target client.

Logos

Are there some big names you’ve worked with? Adding their logos to your sales page boosts your credibility. After all, if big names are working with you, you become that much more attractive to more clients.

Badges and accreditations

If you have trust seals, certifications, or accreditations, add those too. Just like logos, these badges offer social proof that will grow your digital product sales, to the tune of up to 30% and sometimes higher! In fact, Blue Fountain Media’s A/B test with a Verisign trust seal increased sales by 42%.

Live sales numbers/notifications

These are a relatively new addition to the social proof game. Notifications pop up on your screen showing when other people purchase the product. Remember how social proof is about liking what other people like? This gives social proof in real time and shows how popular the product is. If you add this to your page, your digital product sales will start converting higher!

The bottom line

No matter how you slice it, social proof is the key to increasing your share of the digital product sales pie. However, be sure to start integrating social proof mindfully to make the most of its power. And, don’t be surprised when your digital product sales grow in a big way!

6 Reasons Selling Digital Downloads Is The Perfect Side Business

  • Jason@DPD
  • June 4, 2019
  • No Comments

In 2019, everyone is talking about why we need multiple income streams to ensure that our finances are secure. After all, if one is suddenly disrupted or dries up, having other options will ensure that our bills still get paid. There are lots of options out there, but there are many unique benefits to selling digital downloads that makes it the perfect side business and a powerful income stream.

When you consider the wide variety of options that the world of digital downloads opens up for you, it’s easy to see why selling digital downloads is so lucrative. 

So whether ebooks, printables, graphics, audio, courses, graphics, or some other type of download fits best in your niche, there’s definitely an option for you. And this is a case of the sky truly being the limit, especially with platforms like DPD offering a one-stop shop for anyone wanting to make money selling digital downloads.

And, although making more money is likely most people’s chief motivator, here are six reasons that you’ll want to consider growing your bottom line by selling digital downloads.

Shipping Isn’t Even a Blip on the Radar

When products travel as fast as the click of a button or an email, then the age-old costly problem of shipping is no more. Not only do you not have to compete with mega-retailers like Amazon who promise goods in 1-2 business days (or less!), but you create the playing field where you are the star. What’s more, your clients don’t have to wait days for their product, they can download it as soon as the purchase is complete. This means that you can start capitalizing on their excitement immediately with tips on how they can use their new product.

Selling Digital Downloads Gives You the Highest Margins 

When you sell digital downloads, you don’t have to pay a wholesaler a big chunk of change and lose 40% of your sales in fees. On the contrary, when you use a platform like DPD, you pay a low monthly fee and otherwise, you get to keep your money. Outside of transactional costs, a digital storefront means that you have extremely low overhead, especially in comparison to a brick and mortar business. That means that your new side business can quickly become a valuable income stream that is almost pure profit.

You Reach a Global Audience

A traditional brick and mortar business can be fantastic, but it also limits you to a specific geographic area, unless you create new locations which is both time-consuming and costly. But selling digital downloads gives you global potential. You can reach anyone with internet access, which in the age of the smartphone is nearly everyone in the world. What can you do with this limitless potential? Just about anything. With a global audience at your fingertips, start making goals that match your potential by creating a digital download that can truly deliver.

Build it Once and Reap the Sales Rewards

If the phrase “passive income” is music to your ears, then you may find this to be the biggest draw of selling digital downloads. Because truly, a digital download can be set it and forget it. Once you’ve created your digital download, whatever it is, you can start selling it. And because platforms like DPD keep track of your sales, if you ever need to update your product, you can make sure that your buyers are aware of any updates.

Selling digital downloads is absolutely one of the best ways to generate passive income. Your digital download will be available for purchase as long as you choose to allow it. And while, to maximize your sales (and profits), you’ll want to do some marketing and perhaps an email nurturing sequence or two to ensure that your target market knows about your product, it is easily something that can continue to generate income 24/7. 

You Set the Rules 

How do you want to price your digital download? Sure you put lots of time and energy into it up front, but since this is your product for sale on your site, you can set the rules of engagement. Meaning, do you want to set it up as a pay-as-you-go or a la carte system? Would you rather have your product(s) be available when users pay a one-time fee? Or maybe you’re selling subscription-based access that generates a monthly income. You get to set the rules for how the money comes in as your digital download sales grow. 


If you want to reach a new audience, why not let some brand ambassadors do the marketing for you by creating an affiliate program that offers a discount to clients these influencers send your way? 

Want to run a discount promotion or build a bundle? That’s 100% in your control, too. You get to decide if and when you want to offer a sale or if you want to take advantage of scarcity mindset and offer a low introductory price to the first 100 buyers.

Direct Contact with Your Audience (and the ability to upsell them)

The true beauty of selling digital downloads is getting to maintain direct contact with your audience. After all, once they buy from you once, chances are good that they’ll buy from you again. So not only will you be able to continue to market your new digital downloads to your audience, but you can upsell them to the next level of related services. 

Most importantly though, once people buy your digital download, you can continue to stay in touch with them via a weekly or monthly newsletter that allows you to give them free tips and tricks and first-in-line access to any new products.

The takeaway here is that selling digital downloads is a hugely profitable way to grow your income. Maybe it starts as a side hustle and grows into a significant source of income. Regardless of what you’re selling and how many digital downloads you offer, the income potential is nearly limitless, so take advantage and start selling digital downloads soon. There’s really no downside.

Making Great eBook Covers on a Budget

  • Jason@DPD
  • February 23, 2018
  • 1 Comment

One of the biggest things you can do to improve sales and give a professional appearance to your information products is have a great cover / product photo for your downloadable product. In the case of ebooks or PDFs, this means you need a cover you can use on your website, on your product in DPD to be shown in the cart and customer portal, and when marketing your product. In this post we’ll go over some options for creating covers and show you a simple workflow to create your own.

Continue reading Making Great eBook Covers on a Budget

Alternatives to using Coupons

  • Jason@DPD
  • August 13, 2013
  • No Comments

We came across an interesting article today titled The Coupon Code is a Slap In the Face that was decidedly anti-coupon code.

From the article:

You want to pay for this product or service. You were prepared to pay the advertised price; now you know there is (or has been) a magical passcode that could get you a lower price. You fire up Google, and search: “product name, coupon code.” You get pages of results: mostly garbage, some scams, and a few legitimate coupon sites. Unfortunately, the codes listed on those sites are a year old: you missed your chance.

Why do web apps and retailers do this to their paying customers? At the moment you’re actually ready to buy something you get a slap in the face: ”You’re paying full price, but if you had our magic code you wouldn’t have to.”

We’re Not Anti-Coupon if Thats What You’re In To

Hey, we don’t judge! Coupon codes are valuable promotional tools for some vendors. DPD supports coupon codes with some powerful targeting controls like dates they’re active, specific products required for them to be used, item and cart total requirements, and more.

However, we understand and appreciate the school of thought that coupon codes are in fact bad customer service, so we wanted to share with you some alternatives to using coupon codes for promotions.

The Coupon Field Can be Disabled

First off, if you don’t use coupons and don’t want users stopping checkout to go Google around and try to find a coupon code because they see a coupon field in your cart you can turn it off.

1. Log in to DPD
2. For the store you want to disable coupons for, go to Theme in the left menu
3. Edit your current theme and select the “Cart” page options
4. Uncheck the box to display the coupon field and save.

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That’s it! Remember though, if you decide to offer a coupon in the future you’ll need to go back to your theme and re-enable the field.

Alternate Price Points

As suggested in the article:

[Or] instead of coupon codes, they should have separate referrer URLs for people with the code so you don’t feel like the loser who didn’t get invited to the party.

DPD is set up to support alternate price points, and any product in DPD can have an unlimited number of alternate price points without using additional product slots.

Price Points are just what they sound like: different prices you charge for the same product. For example, you might sell your eBook for a regular price of $20.00. Instead of giving a 25% off coupon out, you could create an alternate price point of $15.00 and put it on your special offer landing page. People who buy from the $20 and the $15 price point are buying the same thing, they’re just paying different prices just like with a coupon. They’ll both go through the same checkout and get the same product with the same flow, no coupon required.

You can create a special landing page on your website for a promotion. Then, generate your DPD buy button using a special price point and place it on your landing page. Everyone who buys through that button will get the special price point it was created for.

You can use price points in other ways too. One of the most popular uses for alternate price points is for special offers to your email subscribers. You don’t even need to create a special landing page. Send a newsletter with a HTML or text link to the special price point and your subscribers can start checkout at the special price directly from the email.

Another popular marketing strategy is to make “Special Offers” to marketing related forums. You can easily generate a bbcode button and insert an alternate price point button in to a special offer post on a forum (we even provide pre-formatted BBCode!), paste the link in to a tweet or Facebook post.. just about anywhere you can paste a link you can post a special offer price point.

To create an Alternate Price Point:

1. Log in to DPD
2. Go to Products in the left menu
3. Find the product you want to create the price point for in the list and click it’s Details link
4. On the product detail page, find the price points section and click the “Create new Price Point” link

Add Price Points

5. Set your special price and name for this price point. The alternate price point name will be shown instead of the product name in the cart. This is great for if you want to title it “My Product – List Special Offer!” or similar to customize it further.

Two Price Points Listed

That’s it. You can now generate an “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” button using the special price point:

Generate buttons using alternate price points

Here is an example of that special price point created above:

Add to Cart

Alternate price points are especially suited to limited time promotions because of their behavior when a price point is deleted. When a customer tries to buy using a special price that no longer exists, DPD will automatically revert them to the default product price. This means that when you’re done offering the special price you can safely just delete it–Even if the special price point link exists out there on the internet, people who try to buy from it after the promotion has ended will be offered the product at the regular default price.

Money Saving Bundles / Combos

New Bundle Menu OptionIn DPD bundle products are made up of other products. The great thing about bundles for promotion is that they can have their own price that is completely unrelated to the price of the products in the bundle.

For example, lets say you sell a program for $49.99 and two add-on themes for $19.99 each. The price of these together is $89.97. You could create a coupon that looks for that specific price and the base program before applying a discount, or you could just create a money saving bundle at a special price.

An example promotion might be “Buy the program and two themes for $67.50 and save 25%!” where you would create a bundle that contains all three products and set the price at $67.50.

Just like any other product in DPD, you can always create additional price points as outlined above for bundled products.

To create a bundle is easy: Just go to “New Bundle” in the left menu.

Or Just Lower Your Product’s Price for a While

If all this is a bit complicated you can just lower the price of your product in DPD. Edit your product, set the price lower, and save. When you’re ready to charge more, raise the price again.

Unlike PayPal buttons and other systems, With DPD you don’t have to regenerate the button code when you change the price–the buttons link to the product in DPD so whatever the current price is when the customer clicks it is what we’ll charge.

Want to sell for $10 for a few weeks instead of $20? Go ahead. You don’t need to update your website code. Ready to switch back? No problem; just log in to DPD and raise the price of the product. Everything will update automatically.

The Bottom Line

DPD supports coupons. We understand lots of people love to offer coupons, and we recognize their value to merchants who use our system.

We also understand that some people just hate them, so we’ve done our best to give you the most flexible promotion platform we can we alternate price points, bundles, and seamless price updates.

3 Things Independent Writers Need to Successfully Launch an E-Book

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 25, 2012
  • No Comments

It's not over when the writing is done.
Every author, writer or content creator has the opportunity to directly interact with the target audience today. In the past, it’s been necessary to write something and submit it to publishing companies and hopefully catch a break at some point on the way to becoming a famous or at least a somewhat successful writer.

Doing the actual writing is a process in itself, but the end of the writing and editing process is only the middle of the journey. Today, the writer has a few more duties to take on in order to become successful.

Here are three things writers need to successfully launch an e-book.

1. An Interested Audience

You might think this is a bit backward in concept. After all, aren’t you supposed to do the writing and then the audience will form around the book?

That’s true, but only to a point.

In the past, the publisher did quite a bit of work to build audiences for writers. In fact, there were audiences that followed particular publishers because they trusted the publisher to bring in writers that would be appealing to audience members.

As an independent, though, you are responsible for building an interested audience.

The time to start building your audience is now. Even if you don’t have a product to release at this point it’s time to start building your audience.

Look to connect with people in social media. This can involve social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but even more important is an email list. Put up a free blog or a basic website and find ways to get people sign up for an email program.

Perhaps you can provide serials or short stories each week as your write your main novels. Or if you’re writing a how-to e-book you could create blog posts each week. This content can be used to build an audience before you release your full-length material.

A popular DPD feature is to create a free product, like a sample chapter or serial story, and collect customer info through the DPD free purchase process. Buyers give you their name and email and we send them a download link to your free content. You can then either email these prospective future customers through the DPD newsletter feature or export them to 3rd party mailing list managers like MailChimp, Aweber, and more.

2. Invested Partners

There are established audiences out there and by tapping into these audiences you can grow your audience faster.

Other writers have audiences. Publishers have audiences including online publishers such as blogs, review websites and more. Your goal is to find the people out there that have similar audiences to your target audience.

Most people think this is limited to starting an affiliate program and paying a commission. While money is a very good motivator for some people, that’s not the option to generate invested partners.

Another way to use partnerships to your benefit is to get others invested in the success of your e-book.

This could include quoting people in your book. Maybe you review something someone else created in your e-book. There are many ways to get people involved in the work. Building partners is a great way to build your audience faster and when more people are invested in your work the more people you’ll have (besides just yourself) to promote the e-book.

3. Automated Processes for Fulfillment

Any time you have the opportunity to automate a process you should take it. You’ll save time, which will be precious because you’ll want to continue writing and creating while building your audience, which takes lots of work especially early on.

The fulfillment process is important. You want to make sure that when someone is ready to make a purchase of your e-book that it’s a smooth process. You’ve already put the work in to get them to the point of purchase that any issue at this point will be extremely frustrating to you. At best it will be a mild inconvenience for your customer and at worst you’ll lose the sale.

An automated checkout and digital delivery process like DPD will handle everything from collecting customer information, calculating the taxes, and processing the payment to sending the customer a unique, secure download link for your e-book.

If you’re ready to sell your eBook then go get your DPD 30-Day free trial and see how easy it is to get started.

Delivering Media to Mobile Devices

  • Jason@DPD
  • July 8, 2012
  • 1 Comment

Here at DPD we often get asked what is the best format to deliver a file to Mobile Devices. These include Android, Blackberry, and iOS devices like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod.

Delivering Files to Apple Devices

The bottom line: You can’t without special apps.

iOS devices, including the iPhone, iPad, and iPod do not have a user accessible file system. It’s not like a PC or Mac where you just download the file with the browser to your desktop. There is no way for a user of an Apple mobile device to “download” or “save” a file to their device from the internet without a specific app that is associated with that file type and includes the ability to save it.  

For example, if buyers have iBooks and you’re selling a compatible PDF, they’ll probably be able to save it (if they know how).   If you’re delivering a zip file that contains a PDF, chances are they won’t be able to open it unless they have an app that handles zip files and allows them to save and open them.

There are free apps available in the iTunes App Store like iDownloader Pro Free that will let you download just about anything, but there is no guarantee that buyers will have an app like that on their device or that once they download the file they’ll have an app that will play it!  As you can guess, delivery gets complicated when every single file type needs to have an associated app.

This is not a limitation of DPD. This is a limitation of Apple that affects every single web page, shopping cart provider, and content delivery service on the internet. With DPD the user will be able to stream compatible media types immediately to their iOS device, but they will never be able to save directly to the device without an associated app.

Because of the above reasons, iOS devices only have one option to get the media on to their device that works 100% of the time- to download it to their PC or Mac and use the iTunes proprietary system to move the media over to the device.

Delivering Files to Android and BlackBerry Devices

Android and BlackBerry devices can save files directly to the device. Your only considerations with these devices are to

1. Deliver a file that is compatible for playback

2. Be aware that the download speeds of mobile data connections to these devices (3G, 4G, whatever) will be slower in most cases than home or office broadband connections, and encode / pack your files with this in mind (aim for a smaller size).

So What’s the Best Format for Mobile Devices?

As a vendor, if you want to deliver files that work with the vast majority of mobile devices, including Android, BlackBerry, and iOS devices (once they are transferred through iTunes to the device from a computer) you should deliver the file in a format that can be played by the device. Below are the most cross-compatible formats for all mobile devices:

Documents:  PDF, epub, mobi (it really depends on the reading app they’re using)

Video: MP4 – H.264 Video / AAC Audio

Audio: MP3 – All bitrates are acceptable, including VBR

References:

Comparison of e-book Formats: Supporting Platforms
iOS Supported Media Types
Android Supported Media Types
BlackBerry Supported Media Types

DPD Loves Olark

  • Jason@DPD
  • December 8, 2010
  • No Comments

This week we added a new feature to our website- live chat through Olark. The verdict so far? We love it. We don’t often write about other services here, but we’re really pleased and think that live chat could be a powerful tool to help our vendors with their sales and conversions so we’re going to tell you our experience thus far-

Olark has a different approach to live chat than many other services- they use the common XMPP protocol for their chat servers instead of proprietary software. For those not up to date on chat protocols, the XMPP protocol is the same thing that Jabber, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, and a host of other chat services use. XMPP support is built in to every multi-protocol chat client and is a snap to set up.

Here at DPD that’s pretty important- I’m on Windows 7, Jacob is on a Mac, and Scott gets the geek badge for developing on Ubuntu. We needed something that would work on all platforms and even our Android phones- Olark fit the bill.

Installation

Olark provides you with a bit of javascript to place in the footer of your site. Thats it. It took 30 seconds to integrate Olark with DPD, and 25 of those were waiting for the editor to open.

Client Setup and Usage

Using Olark with Pidgin
Olark integrates with your chat client like any other service and gives you interesting user information
On my Windows desktop I use Pidgin to keep in contact with the other DPD guys as well as friends and family. Olark integrates with Pidgin using the XMPP protocol as you can see in the screenshot to the right. Visitors to your website are shown with some basic information- where they’re from, what page their looking at, what page referred them to the site, and how long they’ve been browsing around on DPD.

We did a little programmer magic using Olark’s API to automatically display usernames for logged in DPD users to help us be even more effective with support (the logged in visitor’s usernames are blurred in the screenshot to protect our users privacy).

When a user sends a live chat request, it broadcasts a message to all the operators who are online and not “away.” Any operator can reply and “claim” the chat, and if needed you can transfer them to someone else with a simple !transfer command in the chat window. You can also be proactive and pick someone from the list to initiate a chat from your end- you just open a chat window and start typing like you’re sending a message to your Aunt Ruth.

Customization

Olark Customization Options
Olark gives you several themes and lets you further customize them
Olark lets you customize the chat box to your hearts content. They have several pre-made themes, and you can further customize the available themes to your liking.

There are a lot of extra customization features too- You can customize your offline message (as we’ve done with a link to our knowledge base), specify what email to send offline messages to, window behavior and options, and more.

Reports, Transcripts, and More

In addition to integrating with Google Analytics, Olark has built in stats from Mixpanel that show how many visitors have been to your site while you were online, how many you missed when you were offline, and how many chats you had for a given time period. This is great for figuring out the best times to offer live support!

Olark Stats
Olark's built-in stats show engagement numbers

Olark can also optionally record transcripts and email them to a specified address, great for quality control, follow-up, and supervisory functions.

Olark’s Hatchery is their experimental playground with some neat stuff in the works- you can optionally enable an auto-translate plugin that uses Google Translate or check out some new experimental themes. It’s great to use a service that is under active development!

Support

We haven’t really had any problems with the service, but Olark has a well documented API that let Jacob add our user data to the chat widget in minutes. For the one question I had, I chatted up Olark on their site and spoke to Zach, one of the Olark founders who promptly answered my question. He seems like a pretty swell guy too 🙂

Olark does have premium email support for paid users and I expect that will be just as great as the rest of our Olark experience when we need it.

The Verdict? We love it.

There are a lot of things we like about Olark– it’s pretty awesome to see the visitors on your site, where they came from, and where they are in the world in real time. The live chat works well and the extreme ease of setting it up in our own chat clients, with no annoying software, gets bonus points in our book. We’ve generated new happy customers with the live chat feature, and thats really the bottom line.

Olark plans with unlimited conversations start at $15/mo and they even offer a free plan limited to 20 conversations a month so you can try it out and see if you like it. This is one service we wholeheartedly recommend to our vendors and we bet it will improve your conversions too.

DPD is not affiliated with Olark in any way, we’re just happy customers 🙂

Internet Marketing Techniques for Selling Music

  • Jason@DPD
  • October 29, 2010
  • No Comments

Seamus Anthony, a Melbourne, Australia-based musician and DPD user has written a great article on taking advantage of internet marketing techniques to promote music as an independent artist.

He talks about not only getting more exposure for your music, but also making sales:

[quote]Classic Internet marketing is not usually the kind of thing that musicians tend to consider appropriate for promoting their art. Yet to me, giving it a go makes perfect sense because getting more Facebook “likes” or YouTube views is one thing, and an important thing, but it’s not a sale.[/quote]

He also mentions DPD as a platform for not only selling your music, but also as a content delivery network for distributing your free track downloads.

Give it a look: Do Internet Marketing Techniques Work for Selling Music?